TWINEEKS!
There’s scary and devilishly funny double trouble as a family is tormented by evil doppelgangers during a diabolical holiday from hell
Evil twins are always a worry, but when a whole family of diabolical doppelgangers turns up to terrorise a happy household on holiday, the results are seat-chewingly terrifying — and often darkly hilarious.
Us takes us on a deeply weird journey into the conflicted heart of America, but it begins in traditional horror-movie territory. A childhood visit to a seaside fun fair turns sinister when the young Adelaide Wilson meets her flesh-and-blood double in a hall of mirrors in Santa Cruz, California.
Years later, as a wife and mum herself, Adelaide (Black Panther’s lupita Nyong’o) remains haunted by this experience. When the Wilsons go to their beach house, her suppressed memories surface. As does the murderous family, marching like zombies in red overalls, and armed with very large scissors.
The tension ramps up as the film focuses on an astounding performance by Nyong’o as Adelaide and also her angry, bloodthirsty double, Red.
in the same scene, the actress plays a Devil-voiced psychopath and a mother begging for her children’s lives, as the audience feels the uncanny connection between the two women.
Adelaide asks Red who she is, and the answer comes: ‘We are Americans.’
The home invasion scenario also features Adelaide’s cheery husband Gabe (Winston Duke), their son Jason (Evan Alex) and daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph). Each character plays against his or her malevolent opposite to great cinematic effect, with plenty of arterial splatter and jump-scares.
While Gabe is a bumbling mess, his kids wise up quickly, particularly Zora, who appears to be about 13, but turns a golf club and a car into a killing machine with alacrity.
The family goes from shock and distaste at the violence, to indulging in plenty of audience satisfying revenge themselves. The difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ begins to fade. Are they Jekyll or Hyde?
Us is the second film from U.S. director Jordan Peele, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for Get Out — a horror- satire on white liberals with wicked intentions for their black visitors.
Us is a more mainstream vehicle, but retains the same tongue-in- cheek attitude, and contains a powerful message about America’s history and underclass if you look closer.
The opening sequence of the film cites the thousands of miles of disused tunnels and secret bunkers beneath the U.S., and a lengthy, disturbing shot of white rabbits in experimental cages adds to the sense of foreboding. Something nasty is about to rise from the bowels of the earth.
But before all hell kicks off, we get to meet the Wilson family’s richer, snottier neighbours, played by Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker.
Moss’s character is in a kaftan, on her third glass of rosé, luxuriating in her disintegrating marriage on the beach.
SOON,she declares it’s ‘vodka o’clock’ and goes home where the white carpets are soon bloodied, and The Handmaid’s Tale actress is liberated from seriousness to enjoy every minute of the schlock-horror mess.
Peele’s ironic musical choices for the choreographed carnage include asking an Alexa- style smart device called ‘Ophelia’ to play the Beach Boys’ Good vibrations, and the N.W.A. rap f*** Tha Police.
The blasphemy may not be up
everyone’s street, but in defer - ence to horror cliche there is also a Biblical foretelling of doom, with references to Jere - miah 11:11: ‘Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.’ Nervous? You should be. TROUBLeD teens of a different sort turn up in Five Feet Apart, another entry in the terminal romance genre pioneered by The F ault In Our Stars and Now Is Good.
This hospital melodrama fea - tures American adolescents being treated for cystic fibrosis, a life -shortening genetic condition which causes the build-up of mucus in the lungs.
Naturally, two patients, Stella (hayley Lu Richardson) and Will (Cole Sprouse) spar for a bit and then fall madly in love.
While the film is doubtless well intentioned, there is no forgiving the atrocious dialogue, tacky ballads, and cheesy exploitation of the situation where cystic fibrosis patients are supposed to remain six feet apart to avoid bacterial cross-infection.
Radically, Stella breaks the rules a teeny bit so she and W ill can walk together five feet apart by holding a huge pool cue between them at all times.
hot chastity is always a winner, and here a mere kiss could kill, similar to the T wilight series, when you worried that vampire edward might snack on Bella if they got too close.
In Five F eet Apart, our two leads look Instagramably beautiful at all times, if a little wan.
Only in one scene, when they show each other their operation scars by the fancy hospital swimming pool, does there seem to be any attempt at portraying the hardgoing reality of living with this disease.